


claim your prize (in the name of love)

by greekdemigod



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anne is a college soccer player that's the plot, F/F, Football | Soccer, Long-Distance Relationship, have some fluff in these difficult times
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: Anne Lister is not the type of person to fall for someone she has never met. But—she has been talking to this girl.
Relationships: Anne Lister (1791-1840)/Ann Walker (1803-1854)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 95





	claim your prize (in the name of love)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dedicated to my safd fam, the clexacan'ts, and the zoom parties keeping me sane.  
> y'all the real deal <3

Anne Lister is not the type of person to fall for someone she has never met. That’s just not her MO when it comes to wooing women. She has girls tripping all over themselves to get her attention, gay bars that she can swagger into and be guaranteed to leave with someone that night, older women that are brought back to life when she puts her hands on them.

But—she has been talking to this girl.

It happened completely coincidentally. She had been on a bus to an away game on the other side of the country just like now, something heavy rocking from her headphones, idly tapping through Tinder. If she could find someone willing to have some fun for the night, that would be a nice reward post-match.

Only a fool would pass up on Ann Walker. Her pictures had all been very blonde, sunny, bright. In some, a golden-haired dog had been pulled into the frame with her. It was hard not to notice the blue eyes or the genuine smile. Every picture was slightly grainy, taken on a phone with only a passable camera, and so much more real all for it.

(For comparison, Anne’s Tinder has near-professional photography. Tib is phenomenal with a camera, and being a lesbian herself, she’d known all the right angles to get to make Anne shine even more. The few shirtless pictures, sweaty and flushed from playing, did not hurt.)

Anne hadn’t even read Ann’s bio, just swiped right and thought of her a little longer before moving on with the very thought-consuming task of swiping right on everyone she’d sleep with.

She chuckles to herself as she thinks back to the way they met. Pretty conventional for this day and age, a lesbian cliche for sure, but it’s their story. They’d met on Tinder. That was all there was to it.

Ann didn’t actually swipe right back on her until the morning, when Anne was still buried beneath heapings of covers in an unfamiliar hotel room, slightly sore from exerting herself too much during the game the night before, barely lucid when she unlocked her phone to find the cutest message waiting for her.

_[Ann Walker - 07:13 am | Titanic.]_

_[Ann Walker – 07:14 am | That’s my ice breaker. Hi.]_

(She has found out in the meantime it wasn’t Ann that had sent her that first message, but her best friend Catherine had in her place. Ann had been too overcome by _‘the hottest girl_ liked _me’_ to be able to.)

They spent the first half hour of knowing each other within a ten mile radius from each other. The rest of their relationship so far, they’ve spent almost four hundred miles apart.

Anne fought hard not to develop any kind of feelings whatsoever. Even when she woke up every morning and sent Ann a good morning text first thing. Even when they started Facetiming, Ann framed within her phone screen blushing so prettily, so long that either one of them would fall asleep on call.

She fought valiantly, but ultimately she had to concede to Ann Walker’s incredible charm, endearing shyness, and amazing personality hidden behind that soft, quiet exterior.

Ann does not care about soccer. Any sports, really. But she likes art, history, literature, language, life—those things they all have in common. She also really likes girls a whole lot and Anne in particular, so Anne has forgiven her the disinterest in soccer.

They make a good pair. Everyone around her has told her that since she started talking to Ann, she has become more mellow, been smiling more, being more patient and attentive.

Ann once said that Catherine likes what Anne brings out in her, because she has become more spunky and confident knowing Anne is in her corner.

They would be the perfect couple if not for that vast distance between them keeping them from things as simple as holding hands and as profound as kissing each other in front of the whole world.

But not for much longer.

Anne is _nervous_. She never gets pre-game jitters, so with the incessant tapping of her foot against the seat in front of her she earns herself a few frowns and concerned glances from teammates that think their captain is scared—oh, they’ll fucking destroy Edinburgh, of that she’s sure. They’re 4-0 in the head-to-head since Anne joined the team two years ago.

Winning should be easy.

Somehow, facing the girl she’s madly in love with for the first time is not. This is why she doesn’t do long distance—it overly complicates something that’s so simple.

“You’re driving everyone nuts,” Mariana whispers as she kicks Anne’s bag to the floor and slides into the now-vacated seat next to her. “Try not to show everyone you’re falling apart.”

“I’m _not_ falling apart,” Anne bites back, glaring. “I just don’t want to mess this up.”

“Oh yeah, because your girlfriend is definitely going to run when she sees you’re just as hot in real life as you are on the internet, right?” Mariana rolls her eyes and elbows her in the side. “The whole team is going to lose it if you keep being like this. Keep it _in_.”

“Yeah, yeah. Piss off, you’re cramping my style.”

Anne slides the chunky headphones back onto her ears and turns _Pvris_ way the fuck up. She can be more collected. Never mind that the relationship they have been weaving together over the past few months is about to become even realer.

The six hour drive could have been made earlier, but Anne in particular has been so busy that they never quite got to it. Between being a high level athlete, with all the practices and games and other responsibilities that come along with that, as well as being in her final year of pre-med, time just isn’t a resource she can freely expend.

But they’re on their way to Edinburgh now. The city her girlfriend lives.

She should be allowed to be a _little_ jittery, damn it.

When they disembark from the bus and get ushered into to the stadium, Anne feels awareness vibrate in her blood stream. They’re in the same city. What would Ann be doing right now?

They need to be on the pitch in an hour, and since Ann has so little interest in the sport, there is no way she’ll suspect anything.

(And she got Catherine involved in the plans just to be sure.)

_[Anne Lister – 2:45 pm | hey baby, what’re you up to? still watching euphoria?]_

Mere minutes later—

_[Ann Walker – 2:49 pm | I have been KIDNAPPED! Cath is taking me somewhere and she WILL NOT TELL ME where we are going. Rescue me?]_

Anne grins, slowly typing out her reply.

_[Anne Lister – 2:50 pm | i’ll get my cape out of the laundry and be right there]_

God, she has made that joke _so_ often, and now it’s about to come true. Although instead of a cape, she’ll be in her soccer jersey, but to Anne that’s just about the same thing.

They’re in the locker rooms before she has time to think through what she wants to say—both to Ann, and to her team. She has never been this scatter-brained on game day before, keeps reaching for the wrong thing on the wrong side of her, staring blankly ahead.

She pulls herself together and straps herself into her shoes, stomps her cleats against the tiles beneath her.

“Alright, ladies. Come here and huddle.”

Anne looks across the expectant faces, beaming trust at her. She has never led them astray before. Coach will be in soon to give them some last-minute advice, go over the strategies and composition they’re using, but those few minutes before she brings them all into game mode are hers.

Silence descends.

“I am so very fucking proud of you all. Least of all because I’ve been a sucker all day, most of all because we’re champions. Let’s do this!”

There’s claps, and nods, and Tib hollers so loud that she can hear the reciprocating cry from Edinburgh’s ladies locker room.

Coach does indeed talk them through today’s plan of attack. As center midfield, it’s up to Anne to keep her head in the game and fill in where needed. Shore up defense, drive the attack. She has great statistics in the latter—she has made plenty of goals happen, even if her name has been on only one of them.

She rubs her fingers through her eyes before using them to bundle her hair together and bind it together. Held breath, she waits until the sound of cleats on the floor has dissipated. Last chance to check if Ann has sent her any more texts, and boy, has she ever.

_[Ann Walker – 3:11 pm | You’ll never guess this. She’s taking me to watch a soccer game to educate me because I’m dating a professional soccer player. CAN YOU BELIEVE HER?]_

_[Ann Walker – 3:15 pm | She’s telling me so many things that I’ll never be able to remember. You’ll still like me if I don’t retain any of this, right?]_

_[Ann Walker – 3:17 pm | WAIT A SECOND]_

_[Ann Walker – 3:18 pm | WHY DOES EVERYTHING HERE SAY EDINBURGH IS PLAYING OXFORD?????? ANNE?????]_

_[Ann Walker – 3:20 pm | Anne, I don’t remember if you play for Oxford A or Oxford B, please, I’m losing my mind. Are you playing here today?]_

The last text is from ten minutes ago. It hurts her heart—tiny stabs of pressure—not to reply with something comforting, something to ease her emotions. Ann feels them so intensely and usually she tries not to add to it.

She takes in a deep breath.

The first step onto the pitch on a game day still makes her feel so empowered after all this time. The girl that stood up against expectation in the small town she hails from and demanded she be let onto the soccer team, regardless of her gender, always comes to mind. She’d never dreamed of this—all she had wanted to do was play.

Anne takes in the filled bleachers with a grin, reveling in the stamping of feet, the cheers, the clapping.

Her eyes track across the Edinburgh section, searching, heart in her throat. So many faces, all of them too small to make out properly, Ann could be anywhere, could be—

“Anne!”

Goose bumps race over her bare arms when she faintly picks up on the shout coming from behind her. It doesn’t register through her senses so much as from her gut, she _knows_ , and spinning around only confirms it. A head of bright blonde hair in a sea of Oxford’s dark blue.

She feels touched that either she or Catherine thought to sit on their side of the tribune.

There is ten metres between them at most. She’s supposed to be marching onto the field with her team, she’s needed at the center of the field for the coin toss, but Mariana’s hand in her back pushing her sideways is hardly needed as her longing tears her from the game.

Ann is crying, tears trickling down widely-smiling cheeks. Anne cups her face instantly, worry overtaking her, and then feeling sparks of joy shoot through her that she’s _holding Ann_ , feeling her cold skin against her palms, looking into dazzling blue eyes without the slight distortion of the computer screens between them.

Ann’s hands clasp around her forearms, holding her in place right back, though it doesn’t stop the shaking of her hands.

“You’re here.”

“I’m here.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I—”

_“It looks like Oxford’s team Captain has something more important to do than play the game.”_

_“It is_ only _the penultimate game before play-offs, Reggie, so nothing much to worry about!”_

Anne rolls her eyes at the commentators, but she does start to slowly disentangle from Ann. “We’ll talk after, okay?” She starts to walk away, but then thinks better of it—ninety minutes will never have gone by so slowly as they will if she doesn’t do this—and returns.

Ann’s eyes go wide, looking up at her so innocently—or not entirely, something else burning there too. Hope, or expectation, or—

“Can I kiss you?”

Ann’s mouth opens a sliver, her answer breathy and stammered, “ _Please_.”

She thought she would be more nervous for this, but aside from some fluttering in her chest that can equally be credited to game jitters, this feels exactly right. Ann’s lips are softer and colder than she expected, fit so nice against her own, searching, tentative.

They’ll do better later, when they have some time to warm up.

Whether it’s wanting to impress her girlfriend or energized by their first kiss, Anne Lister plays one of the best games of her life. It’s like not a single thing can go wrong—she stays in control of the ball, helps deliver two goals through a corner kick and a long pass, and she dodges a tackle so neatly she almost stops to puff up her chest and brag about it.

The sweat is pouring off of her by the end of extra time, wisps of her long hair escaping her ponytail to stick to her cheek, but none of it matters except the whistle that finally sets her free. She stays to celebrate and shake hands exactly as long as is necessary before she’s hauling ass across the field with the last bit of running she has left in her calves, back into the arms of her girlfriend.

* * *

Anne hadn’t been sure how their relationship would translate to _‘real life’_ , but it’s remarkably easy to hold Ann’s hand in her own as they’re traipsing through Edinburgh. Freshly-showered and no longer in her soccer get-up, they finally get a chance to just _be_.

Their conversations are frequently halted for smiles and laughs, for inching close and claiming a kiss.

It’s different from previous relationships she has had only in how aware she is of Ann at all times because she’s not used to having her so close, and in how much more giddy she becomes at every touch.

“I think I should start getting into soccer more.” Extremely fitting with Anne’s spare jersey now pulled on over the sunflower yellow dress she was wearing. Anne had never seen a more beautiful vision than ‘LISTER 18’ on Ann’s back before she sidled up and wrapped her arms around her. “So I can understand what you’re doing.”

“Only if you promise not to root for Liverpool.”

Ann leans against her, smiling against her shoulder in that magnificent way she has been doing all evening. “I’ll only be rooting for whatever team you’re on, of course.”

“That—works perfectly for me.”

She has never been so content just to walk and talk, even the sights of the city falling away as a mere backdrop to their conversation. It flows easily, them talking about this and that, nothing important even but the fact they get to talk face-to-face? Priceless.

“I should have come up here much sooner,” Anne sighs wistfully, trying to ignore the sky darkening and knowing she has to be back at the bus in a matter of minutes and not hours to be heading home. “I will be back as soon as I can. And this time I’ll let you know in advance and stay longer.”

“I can come visit you too.”

When Ann leans up to kiss her again, it lasts and lasts, her arms woven around Anne’s neck, Anne’s hands in Ann’s hair, the kiss deepening, their breaths pushing out with puffs of sound as words are no longer needed and they want to squeeze as much as they can out of the last minutes left.

They stay close together all the way up to the bus, where Anne eventually does have to kiss her that final time, has to pull her hand away, take a step back. “Soon,” she mouths after all the goodbyes.

They look at each other until the bus rounds a corner and breaks their line of sight.

_[Ann Walker – 10:31 pm | I miss you already.]_

_[Anne Lister – 10:32 pm | i miss you too]_

_[Ann Walker – 10:34 pm | Soon, right? Really soon?]_

Anne holds her phone to her chest, smiling to herself.

_[Anne Lister – 10:36 pm | asap. i need you back in my arms, baby]_

* * *

They don't go several months without seeing each other again after that.


End file.
